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A global threat
India and Pakistan's nuclear arsenals are tiny compared to those of the United States and Russia, and these weapons are focused primarily on deterring each other, but that does not mean they're purely regional threats. Unlike conventional weapons, nuclear weapons create lasting and far-reaching effects that scientists have posited could upend life on Earth if warring parties were to use them in sufficient numbers.
In 2012, Alan Robock, a distinguished professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences and Associate Director of the Center for Environmental Prediction at Rutgers University, and Owen Brian Toon, a professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences and a research associate at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder, argued that it might not take a large amount of nuclear weapons to create a scenario commonly known as "Nuclear Winter."
In general, this hypothesized event occurs when smoke and soot from nuclear explosions block significant amounts of sunlight from reaching the earth's surface, leading to a precipitous drop in temperatures that results in mass crop failure and widespread famine.
Robcock and Toon summarized their findings, which were based in part on their previous work, in an article in the Bulletin of The Atomic Scientists, writing:
Bulletin of The Atomic Scientists
A graph from Robock and Toon's 2012 paper showing changes in precipitation and temperature based on the amount of soot from generated from nuclear explosions.
The bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima Japan, known as Little Boy, was an inefficient and essentially experimental design with a yield of around 15 kilotons. The reported results from Indian and Pakistani nuclear testing indicate that both countries can meet this threshold and both countries' weapons programs have almost certainly matured in the decades since.
In previous studies, Robcock, working with others, postulated that temperature changes could begin within 10 days of a limited nuclear exchange and the effects from the detonations of 100 nuclear weapons in the 15-kiloton class would directly result in the deaths of at least 20 million people. The second order impacts would be even worse in the years that followed.
Luke Oman
An animated image showing the density and spread of soot following the detonations of 100 15-kiloton class nuclear weapons during a regional conflict between India and Pakistan based on the models Robcock, et al. first developed in 2007.
In 2014, Michael Mills and Julia Lee-Taylor, both then working at the federally-funded National Center for Atmospheric Research's (NCAR) Earth System Laboratory, authored another paper with Robcock and Toon. This study concluded again that detonation of 100 15-kiloton yield bombs in a purely regional conflict would result in "multi-decadal global cooling" and "would put significant pressures on global food supplies and could trigger a global nuclear famine."
NCAR
A map from Mills, Taylor, Robcock, and Toon's 2014 paper showing the average change in global temperatures for June-August and December-February over a two to six year period following a regional nuclear war involving the detonation of 100 15-kiloton nuclear weapons.
It is important to note that critics have questioned whether the Nuclear Winter concept relies on too many assumptions and would ever actually occur. At the center of many of these rebuttals are debates about whether the nuclear explosions would truly create the amount of smoke and soot necessary for major climate change, as well as the specific conditions for those particles to remain in the atmosphere for a prolonged period of time.
The studies here do indicate significant impacts based on a relatively limited number of nuclear detonations of smaller yield devices, though. But even if the impacts are less pronounced than projected in this particular scenario, they could be far more severe if India and Pakistan were to use a larger number weapons and/or ones of higher yields, which both belligerents readily have.
In addition, Nuclear Winter is just one of the potential things that might happen following a nuclear exchange between the longtime foes. A detonation of dozens of nuclear weapons, even small ones, would throw hazardous nuclear fallout into the air that, depending on the weather pattern, could carry that material far and wide, causing both near- and short-term health impacts. The various ground zeroes themselves would be irritated and potentially hazardous for many years to come.
Depending on where the detonations occur, a nuclear exchange could potentially cut people off from critical water and food supplies, putting increased and potentially unsustainable strains on uncontaminated areas. After the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, situated in Ukraine, melted down and exploded in 1986, authorities established a 1,000 square mile restricted access "exclusion zone" that remains in place today.
CIA
A map showing the recorded spread of radiation in the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster.
There would also be a major danger of second-order "spillover" effects, as individuals fled affected areas, putting economic and political strains on neighboring regions. This could inflame existing tensions not directly related to the inter-state conflict between India or Pakistan or lead to all new and potentially violent competition for what might already be limited resources. India has already threatened to weaponize water access in its latest spat with the Pakistanis.
Any serious impacts on food and water supplies, or other economic upheavals as a direct or indirect result of the conflict, would have cascading impact across South Asia and beyond, as well. The very threat of a potential India-Pakistan war of any kind already caused some negative reactions in regional financial markets. Those markets would certainly collapse after an unprecedented nuclear exchange actually occurred, and that is before the long-term physical impacts of such an event would even manifest themselves.
Overall, we are talking about a sudden and dramatic geopolitical, financial, and environmental shift that would change our reality in a matter of hours. Even then, the darkness, both figuratively and literally, that could propagate over the weeks, months, and years would be far more damaging.
How great is the risk?
So far, India and Pakistan have not made any clear indications that the fighting is close to crossing their nuclear thresholds. Pakistan's warnings about the risks of escalation seem more calculated to try and prompt India to back down.
India itself has a so-called "no first use" policy, which means it has publicly pledged to use its nuclear weapons only in retaliation to a nuclear strike. However, experts have increasingly called into question whether this is truly the case and whether India might be developing delivery systems more suited to a first strike should there be a need to shift policies.
Pakistan, however, does not have a no first use policy and has insisted on its right to employ nuclear weapons to defend itself even in the face of purely conventional threat. Pakistani officials have, in the past, specifically cited this policy as way of deterring India, which has a much larger and in some cases more advanced conventional force, and preventing larger wars.
The concern, then, is that this policy appears to have failed, at least to some degree, with India's strike on undisputed Pakistani territory on Feb. 26, 2019. India, however, did not target Pakistani forces in that instance and exchanges between the two countries have been limited, at least so far, to the disputed Jammu and Kashmir region, where violent skirmishes occur semi-regularly without precipitating a larger confrontation.
We can only hope that the two countries will find a diplomatic solution to this latest conflict and avoid any further escalation. If things were to spiral out of control and lead to the use of nuclear weapons, it would be something that would threaten all of humanity.
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zon...orld-as-we-know-it-through-a-nuclear-exchange
A global threat
India and Pakistan's nuclear arsenals are tiny compared to those of the United States and Russia, and these weapons are focused primarily on deterring each other, but that does not mean they're purely regional threats. Unlike conventional weapons, nuclear weapons create lasting and far-reaching effects that scientists have posited could upend life on Earth if warring parties were to use them in sufficient numbers.
In 2012, Alan Robock, a distinguished professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences and Associate Director of the Center for Environmental Prediction at Rutgers University, and Owen Brian Toon, a professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences and a research associate at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder, argued that it might not take a large amount of nuclear weapons to create a scenario commonly known as "Nuclear Winter."
In general, this hypothesized event occurs when smoke and soot from nuclear explosions block significant amounts of sunlight from reaching the earth's surface, leading to a precipitous drop in temperatures that results in mass crop failure and widespread famine.
Robcock and Toon summarized their findings, which were based in part on their previous work, in an article in the Bulletin of The Atomic Scientists, writing:
"Even a 'small' nuclear war between India and Pakistan, with each country detonating 50 Hiroshima-size atom bombs – only about 0.03 percent of the global nuclear arsenal's explosive power – as airbursts in urban areas, could produce so much smoke that temperatures would fall below those of the Little Ice Age of the fourteenth to nineteenth centuries, shortening the growing season around the world and threatening the global food supply. Furthermore, there would be massive ozone depletion, allowing more ultraviolet radiation to reach Earth's surface. Recent studies predict that agricultural production in parts of the United States and China would decline by about 20 percent for four years, and by 10 percent for a decade.
Bulletin of The Atomic Scientists
A graph from Robock and Toon's 2012 paper showing changes in precipitation and temperature based on the amount of soot from generated from nuclear explosions.
The bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima Japan, known as Little Boy, was an inefficient and essentially experimental design with a yield of around 15 kilotons. The reported results from Indian and Pakistani nuclear testing indicate that both countries can meet this threshold and both countries' weapons programs have almost certainly matured in the decades since.
In previous studies, Robcock, working with others, postulated that temperature changes could begin within 10 days of a limited nuclear exchange and the effects from the detonations of 100 nuclear weapons in the 15-kiloton class would directly result in the deaths of at least 20 million people. The second order impacts would be even worse in the years that followed.
Luke Oman
An animated image showing the density and spread of soot following the detonations of 100 15-kiloton class nuclear weapons during a regional conflict between India and Pakistan based on the models Robcock, et al. first developed in 2007.
In 2014, Michael Mills and Julia Lee-Taylor, both then working at the federally-funded National Center for Atmospheric Research's (NCAR) Earth System Laboratory, authored another paper with Robcock and Toon. This study concluded again that detonation of 100 15-kiloton yield bombs in a purely regional conflict would result in "multi-decadal global cooling" and "would put significant pressures on global food supplies and could trigger a global nuclear famine."
NCAR
A map from Mills, Taylor, Robcock, and Toon's 2014 paper showing the average change in global temperatures for June-August and December-February over a two to six year period following a regional nuclear war involving the detonation of 100 15-kiloton nuclear weapons.
It is important to note that critics have questioned whether the Nuclear Winter concept relies on too many assumptions and would ever actually occur. At the center of many of these rebuttals are debates about whether the nuclear explosions would truly create the amount of smoke and soot necessary for major climate change, as well as the specific conditions for those particles to remain in the atmosphere for a prolonged period of time.
The studies here do indicate significant impacts based on a relatively limited number of nuclear detonations of smaller yield devices, though. But even if the impacts are less pronounced than projected in this particular scenario, they could be far more severe if India and Pakistan were to use a larger number weapons and/or ones of higher yields, which both belligerents readily have.
In addition, Nuclear Winter is just one of the potential things that might happen following a nuclear exchange between the longtime foes. A detonation of dozens of nuclear weapons, even small ones, would throw hazardous nuclear fallout into the air that, depending on the weather pattern, could carry that material far and wide, causing both near- and short-term health impacts. The various ground zeroes themselves would be irritated and potentially hazardous for many years to come.
Depending on where the detonations occur, a nuclear exchange could potentially cut people off from critical water and food supplies, putting increased and potentially unsustainable strains on uncontaminated areas. After the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, situated in Ukraine, melted down and exploded in 1986, authorities established a 1,000 square mile restricted access "exclusion zone" that remains in place today.
CIA
A map showing the recorded spread of radiation in the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster.
There would also be a major danger of second-order "spillover" effects, as individuals fled affected areas, putting economic and political strains on neighboring regions. This could inflame existing tensions not directly related to the inter-state conflict between India or Pakistan or lead to all new and potentially violent competition for what might already be limited resources. India has already threatened to weaponize water access in its latest spat with the Pakistanis.
Any serious impacts on food and water supplies, or other economic upheavals as a direct or indirect result of the conflict, would have cascading impact across South Asia and beyond, as well. The very threat of a potential India-Pakistan war of any kind already caused some negative reactions in regional financial markets. Those markets would certainly collapse after an unprecedented nuclear exchange actually occurred, and that is before the long-term physical impacts of such an event would even manifest themselves.
Overall, we are talking about a sudden and dramatic geopolitical, financial, and environmental shift that would change our reality in a matter of hours. Even then, the darkness, both figuratively and literally, that could propagate over the weeks, months, and years would be far more damaging.
How great is the risk?
So far, India and Pakistan have not made any clear indications that the fighting is close to crossing their nuclear thresholds. Pakistan's warnings about the risks of escalation seem more calculated to try and prompt India to back down.
India itself has a so-called "no first use" policy, which means it has publicly pledged to use its nuclear weapons only in retaliation to a nuclear strike. However, experts have increasingly called into question whether this is truly the case and whether India might be developing delivery systems more suited to a first strike should there be a need to shift policies.
Pakistan, however, does not have a no first use policy and has insisted on its right to employ nuclear weapons to defend itself even in the face of purely conventional threat. Pakistani officials have, in the past, specifically cited this policy as way of deterring India, which has a much larger and in some cases more advanced conventional force, and preventing larger wars.
The concern, then, is that this policy appears to have failed, at least to some degree, with India's strike on undisputed Pakistani territory on Feb. 26, 2019. India, however, did not target Pakistani forces in that instance and exchanges between the two countries have been limited, at least so far, to the disputed Jammu and Kashmir region, where violent skirmishes occur semi-regularly without precipitating a larger confrontation.
We can only hope that the two countries will find a diplomatic solution to this latest conflict and avoid any further escalation. If things were to spiral out of control and lead to the use of nuclear weapons, it would be something that would threaten all of humanity.
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zon...orld-as-we-know-it-through-a-nuclear-exchange
